Palmgren joins Swedish Film Institute

Exec to be in charge of production funding

STOCKHOLM — Hjalmar Palmgren has replaced Charlotta Denward as director of production funding at the Swedish Film Institute.

Palmgren has served as a commissioning editor at Swedish pubcaster SVT for the past five years, where he backed both local projects and international co-productions. These included Malik Bendjelloul’s docu “Searching for Sugar Man,” which is a hot contender in the Oscar docu race, Fredrik Gertten’s Sundance player “Big Boys Gone Bananas!*” and Dheeraj Akolkar’s “Liv and Ingmar,” a docu about the relationship between Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman.

From 2002 to 2005, Palmgren worked as a docu feature commissioner at SFI, during which time he handed coin to Erik Gandini and Tarik Saleh’s “Gitmo” and “Terrorists: The Kids They Sentenced,” co-directed by Stefan Jarl and Lukas Moodysson, among others.

Among the projects that have received coin from the SFI recently are Moodysson’s “Vi ar bast” (We Are the Best), Lisa Langseth’s “Hotel” and Felix Herngren’s “The Centenarian Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared.”

Denward joined Swedish major Svensk Filmindustri as production chief on Nov. 1.